AmateurRadio.com

OK, now this is a pretty cool service.

My friend Clint Bradford, K6LCS, has opened a website where he is offering to program almost any HT you can think of for $35. The website is called HamRadioProgramming.com.

The process is very straightforward. You mail him your radio, he’ll program up to 60 memory channels of your choice, and he ships it right back via USPS Priority Mail. Don’t know the frequencies outside your immediate area? Clint will look them all up and program them in. Pretty darn slick.

Now, when I first heard about it I thought to myself, if you’re smart enough to pass an amateur radio exam, shouldn’t you be smart enough to program an HT?

Well, first it’s not really about being smart enough. My first HT was a little Kenwood TH-27A and honestly, it wasn’t that hard to program. Things were different in the old days! 🙂 Fast forward twenty (plus) years, my Wouxun and Baofeng radios are a different story. If hadn’t purchased the programming cable, learned the software, figured out how to get the drivers to work with the radio, etc., I’m not sure my radios would have ever been programmed. In fact, I’ve never been able to program my Baofeng UV-3R because I couldn’t get the drivers to work. Could be just me, but it can be a real pain.

But, let’s say you’re not intimidated by learning new software and tweaking around with USB drivers. This service still makes a lot of sense for those who don’t do a lot of programming because you save the cost of buying those foolish programming cables. I have a different one for both my Wouxun and Baofeng radios and I think I paid $15 for each one.

If you want to save yourself a bunch of time, technical headaches, and the cost of a programming cable, take a look at what he’s offering. If you’re not interested, I bet you know someone who might be.

BuyTwoWayRadios.com released a flyer on Friday detailing some of the specifications for the Wouxun KG-UV8D.

At first glance, the specifications of the KG-UV8D above appear virtually identical to the Wouxun KG-UV6X (if someone can spot a difference, please let me know).

BuyTwoWayRadios.com has confirmed that they plan to offer the radio at $139.99 and will begin taking pre-orders this week. The KG-UV6X is $169.99 at Powerwerx (but also includes a dual-slot rapid charger at no extra charge).

Source: BuyTwoWayRadios.com blog via Brick O’Lore

What a relief to hike again. It warmed up to 45F today and I hit the trail. Down to the Pemigewasset River where I worked Spain, Poland, Norway, Germany and Greece.

I walked about a mile on the access road to the river along the snowmobile trail. Weeks Brook is still frozen. Soon it will be rushing with the spring melt.

Right in front of Shaw Cove is a sharp curve in the road. There’s a row of tall pine trees directly exposed to the southern sun. Even though two feet of snow covers the ground in most places, there is a bare patch at the base of these trees. I set up the KX3 at 5 watts with a 33 foot wire up to one of the pine branches. I spread a plastic bag on the ground to sit on.

I started out on 17 meters and heard Christian, LI8OM in Norway. He gave me a 449 and he was 599. This is not an ideal spot for propagation because there is a steep hill directly to the east… toward Europe. So I never expect strong reports here… but it was 55F in the sun and one of the few spots available to operate at this time of year.

Next, I exchanged reports with Serge DL1DGS in Germany. He gave me a 559 and I was pleased to work him again after a long time.

Shaw Cove is directly across from where I sat… and farther… the main flow of the Pemi. Both are frozen and probably won’t break up for a few weeks.

Now I switched to 12 meters and made three quick contacts with SZ7SER, a radio club in Greece followed by DL5LYM in Germany and SP7ASZ, Andy in Poland.

For a final contact I went to 10 meters and worked Oscar, EA1DR in Spain. I’d only operated for 15 minutes, but made six nice contacts. I packed up for the return hike up the hill.

This has been one of the coldest, snowiest and longest winters for several decades. One warm day is all it takes to raise my hopes for spring and summer adventures to come.

Over at Make, they’ve posted an interesting project showing you how to convert your $35 Raspberry Pi into a wide coverage FM transmitter.

This simple hack turns your Raspberry Pi into a powerful FM transmitter! It has enough range to cover your home, DIY drive-in movie, a high school ball game, or even a bike parade (depending on the stragglers).

The hack, called PiFM, uses hardware meant to generate spread spectrum clock signals and outputs them as RF energy on the Raspberry Pi’s GPIO (general purpose input/output) pins. The original creators report getting a range of 50m through heavy walls and multiple rooms.

Luckily, they include this helpful warning:

The Raspberry Pi’s broadcast frequency can range between 1Mhz and 250Mhz, which may interfere with government bands. We advise that you limit your transmissions to the standard FM band of 87.5MHz–108.0MHz (see Step 3) and always choose a frequency that’s not already in use, to avoid interference with licensed broadcasters.

Good advice, don’t you think? :-/

Behold the new Wouxun KG-UV8D. While rumors of an upgraded Wouxun HT have been out for awhile, we have received confirmation from several sources that the KG-UV8D 144/440 version will be available in the United States in late March, 2014. Though no vendor would confirm specific pricing, one source indicated that it will have a street price of less than $150.

According to Wouxun, features will include a large color screen, true dual receive, full-duplex operation (ham sats!) with cross-band repeat, and FCC Part 90 approval (FCC ID: WVTWOUXUN07). Wouxun has yet to publish full specs on their website.

Based on the wild success of the previous Wouxun models, I suspect this radio will sell briskly (especially at the sub-$150 price point). I do hope that Wouxun has addressed the loss of programming issue seen occasionally in some of the earlier versions.

As soon as we get our hands on one, we’ll provide you with a more thorough review of its features. I suspect we’ll also see great reviews from Brick and Jason KC5HWB. It looks like a fun little radio.

Update:

Brick has posted on his blog that BuyTwoWayRadios.com will be selling the KG-UV8D for $139.99 (with free  shipping) and will be taking pre-orders beginning Tuesday.

Last night I had another encounter with Antarctica, namely a QSO with RI1ANC, stationed at the Russian Vostok base. Previous contacts with the land way down under were on 20 meters, but Alex had a nice signal on 12 meters in CW. He didn’t have many takers, so an QSO was easy. Unfortunately it was only a quick exchange, just like the ones with 8J1RL and RI1ANT.

VK0JJJ – Craig, in the Australian Antarctic base of Mawson – doesn’t want any of that and I had the great fortune to have a couple of very lenghty QSOs with him. Olivia was the mode we used, which is especially suited for rag chew QSOs. If you want to catch him try Olivia 32/1000 on one of the 20 meter Olivia channels (14106.5 kHz, then 1 kHz up for the next channel). Even if he is in QSO with another radio amateur it is still fun to read along. When not behind the radio I follow his blog, where you can read interesting things like how they grow vegetables on Antarctica and how they get their supply of water. Fascinating stuff and heartily recommended to visit. He is going back home early May this year, so catch him while you can.

Saturday was the total opposite of Friday. BM2LDT and I had the plan go out to the seaside to take both our KX3s out for a spin. I picked him up in my old clunker and we drove to a place called Qian Zhou-zi (前洲子 in PL05rf), between Danshui and San Zhi.

We got there a little after two in the afternoon (0600 UTC) and set up the MP1 on a stand and a Diamond RHM8B antenna on the car. Strangely enough it seemed there were no conditions, because there were only a few signals around and nobody came back to my calls. So instead we did some antenna measurements with an RigExpert analyzer. My el-cheapo VHF/UHF whip turned out to be very good on 2 meters, but not so good on 70 cm. The Diamond RHM8B was mounted on the car and could easily be brought into resonance. However, it didn’t didn’t perform as well as the MP1.

BM2LDT next to the car with the MP1 in the foreground.

Right after my QSO with OT4A. It’s getting chilly now.